An Announcement

Laci (our granddaughter) and John’s last name is Fox—isn’t this the cutest baby coming announcement!!  Except there is one problem, it makes us GREAT Grandparents!!!!!  Me, a Great grandmother?????  To tell you the truth, I am thrilled--Katie and Laci have always accepted me as a part of their family and both call me Grandma—I can’t wait to hold this new little member of our family!!

We had a busy day—the cowboy decided the rig and the trailer AND the jeep needed a bath.  This park doesn’t allow rig washing at the site but does have a rig washing spot all set up with concrete pad, hoses, brushes, etc.  But, that meant we had to hook the trailer to the motorhome and move everything.  We now have squeaky clean everything! 

The cowboy gets the “husband of the year” award today!!  We have a Splendide washer/dryer combo unit in our motorhome.  At first I hated the thing but became a convert!  While in Texas I used the washer/dryer a lot, almost exclusively instead of a laundromat.  The dryer half of this unit does not dry like a home type dryer—it doesn’t get that hot but it does dry.  Toward the end of our stay in Texas, the dryer just stopped drying—it barely reached a warm temp, much less a hot temperature.  I told Michael and due to the fact the unit is very difficult to remove—he kind of blew me off saying it was doing what it was supposed to do. 

Fast forward to this trip—yesterday I put “fix the dryer” on his honey-do list.  Again, he blew me off.  Well, this morning I put “fix the dryer” on his honey-do list AGAIN and I guess I was insistent enough—my cowboy fixed the dryer!!!!!  Greg White was instrumental in figuring out the cause—Greg said the first thing to check was the vent—was it stopped up??  Wow!!  Was it ever stopped up!  After Michael pulled the vent hose off, we vacuumed and cleaned and the dryer works like a charm!!  I even dried a load of towels!!

Rick left a comment on Sunday’s blog asking if our hydro-hot heating system took the place of a propane furnace—yep, it does—and as I was walking Emmi around the park early this morning, I came to the conclusion—our hydro-hot system is no noisier than a RV propane furnace.   Our little blue flame propane heater uses no electricity and has no fan making it a great boondocking heat option—Michael also made the blue flame heater run yesterday but it still isn’t operating just right yet—and propane stoves are nothing to mess with if not operating properly!!  The cowboy will get it figured out!

Our little heater.

We enjoyed a quiet, delicious New Year’s Eve dinner at home—filets on the grill, oven fries and a Cesar salad—much better than a meal out if I do say so myself!!

Hope you all have a fun, enjoyable and safe New Year’s Eve!

We Made It

Our first stopping spot for the season, Pahrump, NV.  We decided to stay at the Escapee’s Pair of Dice RV park on the outskirts of town.  We thought there would be some ATVing spots around here but that doesn’t seem to be the case.  But, it was 62 degrees and sunny this afternoon—we are happy!

Just as we were coming out of Las Vegas our phone rang, it was Larry—of the Larry and Geri fame—they are the previous owners of a wonderful RV park in Custer, SD, just up the road from Mike and Pat’s place.  Larry and Geri now travel full time in a toy hauler with lots of toys—ATV’s and dirt bikes.  They were still in Pahrump awaiting some generator repairs—they came over for a visit that was cut short by a call from the generator repair facility saying they were good to go.  Larry and Geri along with their Canadian friends pulled out this afternoon heading over into California to do some ATVing—we will catch up with them in a week or so when our time is done here. 

We plan on doing some sightseeing—we are not far from Death Valley National Park, some hot springs at Tecopa, CA, etc.  There is a winery here Ellie—we might just have to do a tasting.  The park has some activities planned for tomorrow night but I doubt we partake—we are not New Year’s Eve partying kind of folks.

Geri said while they were here, “we are so close to Vegas—we could just go over there for New Year’s”  I think the statement was made in jest but I said, “nope, been there, done that, NOT doing it again.”  When Emmi was a puppy 4 years ago, we spent New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas—way, way too many people for us!!

I didn’t take a single photo today—I’ll do better tomorrow. 

It’s Warm So To Speak

Fifty four degrees when we landed at Sand Hollow State Park outside St. George, UT after driving about 450 miles.  Let me tell you, after the cold morning we experienced, 54 degrees felt balmy!!  When Michael got up (way too early I might add), it was 47 degrees in our motorhome even with TWO electric heaters running all night.  Our other heating system is our Webasto hydro-hot which runs off diesel, is powered by a pump which sounds like a jet engine taking off and by some strange reason is located right underneath our bed—leaving that system on at night isn’t conducive to sleep!  We do have a Pro-Cam blue flame heater installed but for some reason, it isn’t working—the cowboy will get it going when we get settled in one spot for a while.  It was 22 degrees in Pocatello but somewhere just north of Salt Lake City the temperature dropped to 7 degrees!  As in most motorhomes, the dash climate controls don’t work so well, thus keeping our windshield clear was a little tough!  So, 54 degrees is balmy! 

This is a beautiful state park surrounded by the red rock cliffs for which this area is famous—the sites are HUGE—we fit—and come with full hookups for $27 per night.  After getting settled we took Ms. Emmi for a long walk and she discovered this little fella—I love how the sunshine made his ears look translucent.

We went through Salt Lake City on a Sunday morning and had the lightest traffic we’ve ever experienced—let that be a reminder to us!!  I remember driving through Salt Lake City one year in a nasty snowstorm—I was driving for some strange reason and we were in the Beaver motorhome—cars were sliding off the road in front of me, people were driving crazy and the traffic was horrendous—today was much, much better!

Tomorrow we head to Pahrump, NV where we hope to stay put for a couple weeks at the Escapees park, maybe do some ATV riding and some sightseeing. 

Life is good.

The campground, not real crowded. 

The lake. 

The Cowboy Is Slipping

Excuse the dirty windshield but does this photo tell you what we are doing??  Yesterday the cowboy looked at the coming weather patterns and decided we were leaving Saturday—YIKES—are you crazy I said, that means I have ONE day to pack the motorhome!  And we did it—we had both created piles of stuff in various places around the house so it was just a matter of getting it to the motorhome which was a half mile away, down our icy driveway.  At 7:25pm last night, both exhausted, we were pulling into Nat’s driveway where we spent the night in the rig—spent the night, not slept—the wind was horrendous, rocking and rolling us all night! 

Now as for the “cowboy slipping” part—at 1pm we stopped for the day after driving right at 300 miles.  I couldn’t believe it—we were stopping???  This is our first time out with this long trailer, we knew we could get into the fairgrounds in Pocatello, ID easily—so that’s where we landed.  We talked about going on another 100 miles or so but the closer you get to Salt Lake City the rarer the campground and the greater the chaos. 

This is the coolest gadget—Michael stole it from our host and friend Steve at our Christmas Day white elephant gift exchange—it is a rechargeable iHome speaker which puts out incredible sound—we have it connected to our iPod. 

Having problems with the iPad—it won’t connect to our wifi network—we have a Cradlepoint router and Verizon aircard—our laptops connect and work well but the iPad is being a touch stubborn.  I have Rick working on it for me!  So far we have found TMobile (the cellular data plan included with the iPad) to be about worthless—maybe when we get into a more populated area it will work better???

Paulette, look what I did yesterday while frantically loading the motorhome:

I purchased a bunch of RIT dye at Wal Mart and followed Paulette’s directions for dyeing wool—it worked like a charm and look at those beautiful colors!!

“I just know the best bite is in here somewhere, I just have to drag it all out to find it.”  Well, Red and Roan—stop wasting hay!

Our last sunrise over the Crazy Mountains for a while. 

A Little More Christmas

Here’s how packages get delivered in Montana sometimes—Santa hires a sleigh driver—guess his reindeer were too tired???  The sleigh driver is Lonn—I think he knows what he is doing! 

Recognize that guy??  Yep, it’s Rollie—he had some business to do and stopped in Billings briefly—long enough to have breakfast with us.  It was so good to see him but way too short a visit!!

We paused in Billings just long enough to retrieve some essential Costco items—milk, eggs, etc. before heading that jeep toward home.  It is positively amazing how slick the parking lots and side streets are both in Big Timber and in Billings.  The airport parking lot almost required ice skates.  I wonder how many broken bones the ER’s are seeing with all this nasty ice—on Monday night it rained before staring to snow sometime over in the night putting a thick layer of ice on the ground that just won’t melt.  Today it was almost 50 degrees so by the time we got back to Big Timber—some of the streets were starting to melt.

The iPad and are are sort of getting along—I have IOS 7.0.4—which I think is the newest version—can you only delete an email by “moving” it to the “trash” folder????  On Rollie’s iPad he showed me how to slide your finger across an email in your inbox, you then have the option of “delete” and one other option which I can’t remember what was.  When sliding your finger on a message in my inbox, you get the option of “move” or “archive.”  I’m sure Rick will have the answer to this one! 

This iPad came from Millenicom preloaded with 3 months of cellular data service from TMobile, free.  We weren’t sure how well TMobile would work here in Montana—this is pretty much a Verizon or AT&T state—well, TMobile is slow as molasses if it works at all but that’s OK—it was free!  At the end of the 3 months we can chose the carrier of our choice or just use the iPad on wifi networks.

Emmi got a new ball for Christmas and she loves it of course!!

Christmas Day

Merry Christmas to all our friends and family—we’ve had a great day.  Last night as I was pursuing Facebook up pops this photo:

This is Janna’s entire immediate family along with some folks from Amsterdam!!  Made me cry I loved it so much!! 

This morning I finally got to open what I’ve been waiting for—my new Retina iPad mini!!  My cowboy was very good to me!!  Now I just have to figure out how to make the thing work!  Had to ask Jill tonight, “where’s the trash can for deleted emails??”  There isn’t one I take it, you have to “move” emails to the “trash folder.”   We opened the gifts sent from Arkansas—I will take some photos in the next couple days—my relatives outdid themselves! 

After opening gifts we donned our boots, coats, hats and gloves, heading up the hill for a good walk in the snow. 

This afternoon we were invited out to Jeane and Steve’s for Christmas dinner.  There were 17 of us—Jeane and Steve’s children, grandchildren, in-laws and friends.  We had a spectacular time—Jeane and her assistant cooks produced one awesome dinner—beef tenderloin to die for, potatoes, homemade green bean casserole--every bite was delicious!!  Jeane has such great taste, setting two beautiful tables so we could all sit down. 

After dinner and before dessert we played a White Elephant/Dirty Santa game—I haven’t laughed that hard in so long.  We were all asked to bring a gift, we each drew a number and the person drawing number one opened the first present of their choosing.  The person drawing number two either stole the first present opened or chose another gift to open.  With 17 people, there was a lot of gift stealing, laughter and jokes.  We had a ball!!  The gifts ranged from Duck Dynasty slippers:

to wine glasses complete with the bottle of wine.The Duck Dynasty slippers were stolen several times as was the beautiful blanket my cowboy opened but didn’t keep long!! 

Jill, Jeane and MichaelPepper the new puppy who found Jill’s jeans quite tasty.

Randy, Jeane’s daughter Jordan and her daughter PJ.

Hilary and Avery—Jeane and Steve’s daughter-in-law and newest grandbaby.

On the way out to Jeane and Steve’s we dropped by to visit with Nat taking him some fresh baked cookies and letting him have the pleasure of Emmi’s company for the evening!

It has been a wonderful Christmas—here’s hoping your Christmas was wonderful too!

Christmas Eve

After our celebration last night we’ve taken it easy today.  Michael did plow the driveway again as we got about 2 inches of horizontal snow last night sometime after we went to bed.  I packed a few more things and disposed of some of the gift opening debris.  Michael got to open one of his presents last night—Nat and I purchased for him a Garmin Montana 650t GPS unit plus Lonn and LoraLee added to the gift by buying one of the additional land ownership maps—so Santa let him open it early.  He is now sitting over there on his computer trying to figure out the ins and outs of a new gadget!  He may need Lonn’s help!! 

We enjoyed some of last night’s leftovers for lunch and are going to spend a quiet Christmas Eve together here at home. 

Today would have been my Dad’s 84th birthday—since he died in 2002 it seems Christmas Eve is a hard day for me—I miss him greatly as well as missing my family back in Arkansas on this day.

Merry Christmas to all our friends and family. 

Christmas With Family

Life is good—I use that phrase frequently and today it was so true, life is good.  We were privileged to celebrate Christmas tonight with Nat, Lonn and LoraLee, Katie and Michael, and Laci and John.  Nat suggested we have Christmas at his house—a very good idea to keep him from being out on the roads at night—and he also suggested he provide the meal.  I called one of our local restaurants—yes, they would cater and we ordered up a prime rib with all the fixings. 

Michael, Lonn, Katie and Michael played several games of cribbage while we waited for John and Laci to arrive from Great Falls.  After their arrival, Michael and Lonn went to get the food.  Oh, my goodness—why haven’t we done this before—the food was spectacular!!  And very reasonably priced!! 

After dinner we opened presents before bringing out the desserts then heading off to our respective homes.  It was a wonderful evening spent with our family—we are blessed in so many ways!

This morning was gloomy but warmer than it has been in days.

This is what we saw on our early morning walk.

By mid-afternoon, much of the snow was gone, melted away.  Tonight on the way into town we spotted this herd of elk hanging out with the local cow herd.

I went to yoga this morning and we enjoyed a little Christmas party afterwards.  I was gifted with chokecherry liqueur, a bottle of wine and some homemade body scrub—I have sweet yoga friends!!  Today was probably my last day of yoga until spring, I will miss it and my friends immensely!!

Yea Hoo!!  We ordered an amplifier and antenna system from the 3G Store—it arrived today and guess what—I can use my cellphone inside our house now!!!!  I have contacted Millenicom and am waiting for them to activate our aircard—then we just might be able to use that aircard here at the house as well as in the motorhome—wouldn’t that be great!!!  Goodbye land line!!

I took photos tonight but was using Katie’s camera—will have to get those photos sent to me.

It was a busy but special day—life is good!!

Comfort Food

On a day like today it seems you need a little or a lot of comfort food.  I had thawed a sirloin roast a day or so ago and decided to use Pioneer Woman’s recipe for Pot Roast—it was just the ticket for a cold, snowy winter day—delicious and comforting!  We have also been snacking all day on the leftover party food from last night—we had a gathering of friends to celebrate Winter Solstice and there was tons of food left over.  Enough to feed us for several days—if we get snowed in, we surely will not starve!

Michael did some leather working and I took a nap—this cold just won’t go away and it makes me very tired.  After lunch I did summon enough energy for working on my little Lynette Anderson, It’s A Dog’s Life quilt which I am doing in wools.  I now have two blocks completed—that is the shapes are cut and fused to the background ready for hand stitching as we tootle down the road. 

We also spent some time packing and rounding up stuff—we were going to turn the heat on in the motorhome and start loading but it just wasn’t the day for that—it snowed hard most of the day—we would have done nothing but track all kinds of snow into the rig. 

That’s about it for our Sunday before Christmas.  Santa is coming—have you been behaving yourself???

Do I win the Betty Crocker award for my cheese tray???

Friday Before Christmas

Not sure what I did today except wander around in a fog with this head cold.  I did manage to take a two hour nap which helped some!  I have the last batch of Chex Party Mix in the oven, I’ve made two other batches trying Pioneer Woman’s recipe for one of the batches.  Now I just have to hide it from Michael—he loves the stuff!!

Did a little house cleaning with the help of Gertrude and took a couple walks with the Emmi girl.  She also got a bath today, much to her dismay!!

Amazon.com to the rescue once again!  Remember Wednesday when I couldn’t buy capers in our local grocery store??  Well, on Thursday morning I ordered capers from Amazon.com for less cost than I would have paid in the Big T grocery store.  And the cost included a $4 shipping charge for getting the capers overnight—we usually don’t pay anything for shipping with our Amazon.com Prime membership but overnight was a measly $4!!  And now I have six bottles of capers—enough to last me a long, long time!

I love getting Christmas cards and our mailbox has been delivering several every day.  I love the newsy Christmas letters people send out, filling us in on all the happenings in their lives.  I too like the photo Christmas cards—got one today from our Arkansas friends, Bradley, Kerri, Harley and Tucker—a fine looking family in their western attire!! 

Warmer today with some sunshine, making for some gorgeous photos.

Where Did December Go

It is really hard to believe Christmas Day is less than a week away!!  I was a whirlwind today, baking cookies and homemade crackers—boy are those crackers good—the recipe is on the RV Goddess blog.  The recipe calls for 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper—in the first batch I used that much pepper, the second batch I cut the amount of pepper in half, they are just a mite spicy!!

The night of the jeep wreck I was wearing a favorite pair of earrings which I’ve had for a long time—when we got home I was wearing only one earring and had no idea where I lost it—in the jeep or out on the road??  I vacuumed the jeep today and when I was finished Michael was picking up pieces of stuff in the back of the jeep—and spotted something shiny underneath the edge of the back seat floor mat—my earring!!!! 

I slept very little last night and as a result Michael didn’t sleep well.  I feel better today—maybe we will have better luck in the sleeping department tonight!

Some of our Christmas decorationsThe little white angels on the mantel in amongst the greenery survived our barn fire in September, 2000.  They had belonged to Michael’s Mother—the day after the fire we were using rakes to sift through some of the rubble and I spotted one of the angles—they all survived, amazing as hot as that fire burned!!  The little red yarn Santa with the white beard on the left was made for Michael when he was a child by his Grandmother. 

Another very cold, cold day with 3-4 inches of new snow, as I type this blog it is 4 degrees above zero!!  BRRRR

WAIT, They Are Leaving Without Me

Not really, Michael and Emmi were taking the motorhome down our steep driveway to the lower shed before the next storm hits tonight.  Look how clean that motorhome is—that won’t last long traveling this time of year!

Michael and I went into town this morning, had lunch at Iron Star Pizza and bought some groceries.  Our little grocery store, an IGA, leaves much to be desired—one day they are out of bread, the next day they are out of milk.  Today it was capers—they don’t carry them anymore—WHY????  I’ve been in grocery stores in towns much smaller than Big Timber with an awesome product selection—why is our grocery store the way it is??  The owners are a young couple and have no interest at all in hearing customer suggestions.   Oh, well—it’s not that much farther to Livingston, now is it??

We spent the afternoon puttering with various projects—Michael is repairing the tow lights on the jeep—we lost one when I hit Julia’s car at yoga and lost the other one when we turned the jeep over in the ditch.  The actual jeep tail lights are encased in a steel cage so they were fine, these tow lights sit on the bumper and took the brunt of our little oop-sies!!  I started putting together a wool project for keeping my hands busy while we head down the road shortly after Christmas. 

The moon going down this morning. 

I went to bed last night thinking I might be getting a sore throat—woke up this morning with a sore throat and feeling mighty icky!  What’s up with that—I don’t have time for a cold—way too much to do!!!  I whipped up a batch of chicken noodle soup for dinner tonight hoping it would make me feel better—maybe a good nights’ sleep will do me good too.

Weather Is A Changing

Well, there it is, Jack St. Milo—sitting out in the Gulf—I don’t really think I would like living on that thing for two weeks at a time, would you??  Rollie called last night and I asked him, “have you caught any fish??”  There was the longest pause and then he said, “NO—it’s too dang far to the water!!” 

Wind again today but not as bad as yesterday and 54 degrees at lunch time.  Mild enough for Michael to finish his roofing job on the shed he built this summer and fall.  Mild enough, we have acres of mud and more mud from all the melting snow.  But the winds are a changing—tomorrow night snow, Thursday snow and temps down into the single digits again.  Nat has always said we should leave in a snowstorm—makes you appreciate leaving more!

I loaded and finished a small customer quilt this afternoon—the owner of this quilt is in Australia with her husband visiting their daughter, son-in-law, grandson and brand new granddaughter.  Donna and Gary have a house over there and spend several months each winter in Australia where it is summer. 

And that’s about it for our Tuesday on the Boulder.

Goodbye Butterbean

We read with sadness Greg White’s blog this morning about James (Butterbean) Carpenter’s death in a car accident December 11.  Butterbean was an avid blog reader and many of we blog writers received daily, witty, down home comments by Butterbean and looked forward to those comments.  He and his wife Joyce invited us to stop by when we were heading to Texas last fall but we thought we didn’t have time—we should have stopped and will always regret not doing so.  May you rest in peace Butterbean and Joyce, may your memories comfort you.  Thank you George of Our Awesome Travels for allowing me to use your photos of Butterbean and Joyce.

It was just another day of puttering, packing a few things, cooking some lunch, playing with the dog and taking walks.  Our walks were a little on the tough side—the wind started yesterday, blew all night and today really got wound up—howling, shrieking, gusting—at times I thought the roof was leaving!!  Walking in that kind of wind is dang tough! 

Sunset this evening was gorgeous!

A Very Good Sunday

The Chinook winds are blowing—when we came out of the church in Big Timber, the wind felt warm, the snow is melting.  Nancy, Shirley and I went to the Christmas Concert tonight at the Lutheran Church—awesome music performed by the most talented people in our area to benefit two local charities, the Food Bank and the Ministerial Association.  A gifted pianist/singer moved to our community several years ago—Tom teaches piano lessons and his pupils stole the show tonight, one young man played the song Music Box Dancer—not an easy piece of music!!  It is amazing to me the talent our community has—the man who owns the local concrete business sings beautiful bass, my quilting buddy Mary’s son Boe has a spectacular tenor voice, the young, talented pianists, my massage therapist has a voice which will knock your socks off—she and Tom, the pianist put the show together every year and it is not to be missed—incredible talent!!

Nat made it up the Boulder to have lunch with us—filet mignons on the grill, baked potatoes and fruit salad.  The dessert was a cherry cheesecake pie which was more like a pudding but it sure tasted good!! 

Michael and Emmi spent the afternoon puttering and holding down the fort.

Taken yesterday

Michael and I enjoyed dinner last night with Jill & Terry, their daughter Kerri and her friend Garret plus Steve and Jeane.  Jill’s house was beautiful decorated for Christmas—the meal and company were spectacular!

Jeane’s latest quilt I did for her.  I love the colors in this one!

We did start loading some non-freezable thing into the motorhome this morning—warm weather clothes, paper goods, etc.